Talking about death
My New Life
Kate Garlinge
4.7 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Birthing is a topic we all want to weigh in on, but death? Not so much. We tend to avoid the subject, and when it comes to talking to our child about death, choosing the right words is hard. Of course, there’s no “right” way to talk about death except to lead with honesty and love.
Jessica Rolph, your host, welcomes Michele Benyo to the show. She is the founder of Good Grief Parenting. Michele came to this work in the wake of losing her child 20 years ago and helping his sibling through the grief. Today, Jessica and Michele discuss how parents can support their children through the death of a pet or loved one.
Highlights:
[1:26] What do parents need to know about how children grieve?
[3:13] How can parents help a grieving child?
[4:30] Michele gives examples of some mistakes parents make when discussing death with children.
[6:53] How can parents begin to use direct language to talk about death with their children?
[9:19] How does grief manifest through play?
[11:41] A question from the Lovevery community: “How do you answer: Are Grandma and Grandpa going to die? Followed by, Are you and Daddy going to die?”
[13:52] When do children start to understand death?
[15:27] How can we prepare our children for the death of someone who is close to death?
[17:10] Another question from a listener: “How do I incorporate family members who died into my son’s life at 7 months old? How do I explain to him that they’re no longer here, but they love him very much?”
[20:11] Ways to approach the death of a pet.
[22:47] How should we prepare children for a funeral?
[25:08] Jessica shares her takeaways from the conversation with Michele Benyo.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to My New Life, a Love Every podcast. |
| 0:12.3 | In this season of the podcast, we take a look at transitions. |
| 0:15.9 | From diaper to potty, crib to bed, saying goodbye to pacifiers, |
| 0:20.1 | we're here to support you through all these |
| 0:22.8 | tricky transitions and more, even the ones that we as parents resist. I'm your host, Jessica |
| 0:29.1 | Rolfe. Burthing is a topic we all want to weigh in on, but death, not so much. We tend to avoid the |
| 0:39.6 | subject. And when it comes to talking to our child about death, choosing the right words is so hard. |
| 0:46.8 | Of course, there's no right way to talk about death, except to lead with honesty and love. |
| 0:52.6 | Our guest on the podcast today is the founder of good grief parenting. |
| 0:57.0 | Her name is Michelle Benio. She came into this work in the wake of losing her own child 20 years ago |
| 1:03.2 | and helping his sibling through the grief. We discuss how you can support your child to the death |
| 1:08.1 | of a pet or a loved one. Welcome, Michelle. Thanks for having me here. |
| 1:13.1 | We are so grateful to have you here. So I wanted to get started by asking, what do us parents and |
| 1:21.6 | adults need to know about how children grieve? I think the thing that most of us really need to know is that children do grieve. |
| 1:34.1 | Just know that, not wonder whether they are. |
| 1:37.7 | Because so often children don't look like, I don't know what exactly it is, we expect |
| 1:44.1 | them to look like, but so't know what exactly it is, we expect them to look like. But so often |
| 1:46.3 | parents will say, you know, they look like they're doing okay. So I think they are. The way that a |
| 1:52.4 | child looks really isn't an indicator of how they are grieving. And I can just guarantee you that if a |
| 2:00.4 | family has a loss and they are going through a loss and they're grieving. And I can just guarantee you that if a family has a loss and they are going through |
| 2:03.9 | a loss and they're experiencing grief, the youngest of their little ones in their family is experiencing |
| 2:11.9 | it too. They're just not showing it in the same way. They don't know how to process it. You know, my daughter said to me, |
... |
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